If you think that the online information about your product is as secure as you thought, I will be sorry to say you are wrong. You never know unless you are tracking your online reputation if any disgruntled customer or competitor is griping about you on Facebook and twitter. A close introspection and we found that Facebook status and twitter updates appear in Google’s search results faster. Why Google? Because that’s where 90% of internet users go to fetch information about you. So make sure what you want them to know about you because your understanding about your brand and product is not what you say, but what Google suggest it is.

Twitter and Facebook have cut a deal with Google regarding updates over six months ago. Other search engines who do not want to be left out of the race are pursuing and seem to have reached similar agreements with social media sites. So it means that if a client or customer happens to search on your Twitter or Facebook username they will see everything and anything that has been tweeted recently or posted on your FB status.

Negatives if any will be visible to any and all of your potential clients. Trust us, if you fail to deal with this you are never going to make a second good impression.

Why do you need to manage your online reputation? It’s anybody’s guess, what will happen if a client or customer researches about your product or service and finds 25 negative tweets and status citing some strange issues on the first two pages of Google.  But what if those 25 negative rants are replaced with positive ones and made to rank above the negative contents?

Ask us is that possible? And ask yourself does your company need it.

Well our answer is, yes it is possible, if you are serious about your online reputation. Remember when you have 25 negative reviews to surmount; you have a serious reputation management problem. Frankly most companies don’t have that much unless their products or service is that bad really. But with reputation management you get a fighting chance to protect what is yours and give your best shot.

We’ll explain a little why physicians should be worried about online reputation management (ORM).

As the online world is wide and handy, bad reputation takes shape here. Online Reputation Management is the monitoring process that addresses or alleviates the SERPs (search engine result pages) or entries in the online media and social networking domains.

Just like anybody Physicians are as visible as anyone on the Internet and they can be at the receiving end too. Physicians, though they are never considered super-humans, are role models so the expectation and responsibilities is obvious. But looking at the speed information travels on the Internet (through blogs and social networking media), the reputation of a physician can be grounded in no time.

We, at ReputationManagementFor.com did an advanced search on Google on selected Physicians and took screen shots of the first page results. Some of the Physicians were shocked – the negatives that showed on the first page were purely false. In several cases the errors were momentous. Some doctors expressed their helplessness; they are worried when any misinformation appears on sites like Yelp, HealthGrades etc.

A senior doctor once reflected on how it took several months for him to persuade a patient to retract the scathing review posted about him on a review website. The problem starts when doctors or Hospitals do not have enough knowledge about such reviews and by the time they realize, the post might have received thousands hits. Now that’s what we say is a reputation management problem!

We know more patients are doing research about physicians online. Some doctor keep a tab on what is been said about them.  Another example is about a doctor who overlooked this factor because he was employed, but it was a collective reputation so he along-with the Hospital took the beating.

Ignoring online reputation is like endorsing somebody’s view that you are a burglar. It is your professional reputation that’s at stake. You’ve worked hard to get and you owe it to defend and manage your ORM.

The world’s largest airport  of Heathrow remained crippled by snow and ice for three days in a row and the  unexpected shutdown of Heathrow just before Christmas  had put  the travel plans of thousands into disarray and left many sleeping on terminal floors. The airport apparently had only a contingency plan to  keep the airport fully operational if less than an inch of snow fell and had no  equipment  manpower, or the crucial chemical de-icers to cope with  any massive snow fall.

While Heathrow canceled two third of its flights  the smaller London airport of Gatwick  put up a commendable service by operating  696 flights at 115% capacity. Gatwick Airport Ltd (GAL) that caters to over five million passengers a year managed to operate over 100 departures even in the worst weather conditions.  Gatwick, which is no longer owned by BAA  remained open  and  made sure that the passengers were made comfortable and warm unlike its bigger counterpart that turned a blind eye to the traveler’s woes.

The Heathrow fiasco has forced the authorities to do a quick thinking and to prevent any repeat of such incidents,the Department for Transport is trying to bring in the airport economic regulation bill in the parliament  that would penalise airport owners for poor service.The reputation of BAA took a plunge when it failed completely in its operation as the rest of the world watched Gatwick handle the snow crisis with ease!

Being Reputation Management Consultants,  Reputation Management For.com, have come with our list of top 10 reputation crashes in the year that was! Being the festive season and all, we’re doing it as honors awarded to the great captains of Industries, firms, celebrities and brands that went through a reputation storm in 2010…

1. Top honors for the worst reputation fiasco and of the handling of it goes to BP. From causing one of the worst man-made environment disaster to botchy PR handling of the issue to large endorsements during the crisis, to a CEO who went on a holiday… the list just goes on and on. The US government has filed a case against the company a few days ago… clearly there’s no competition.

A few post we did on the issue:

1. BP Oil Cam PR Fiasco
2. BP waiver from own goal
3. BP = Beyond Petroleum = Big Pollution
4. BP Pay per click campaign to fix brand reputation

2. Top honors for the biggest individual reputation crisis goes to Tiger Woods, he also takes the award in top sports reputation crisis. What Tiger lost was his wife, millions in divorce, millions in private settlement to the numerous women and sadly his golfing wins. Brand Tiger Woods which propagated a wholesome hero was caught in the blitz of bad press not to mention the millions of jokes about him everywhere. Golf lost its golden boy, who, the sport will hope, will bounce back in 2011.

3. The award for the most reputation embattled industry goes to the automobile industry. This has been a year of recalls and across the board, big names from Toyota, Daimler-Chrysler, Honda, GM, and more have had to make recalls. Nothing seemed to have worked well for the industry in 2010.

4. Biggest celebrity meltdown and reputation fiasco goes to Mel Gibson, his puerile rants caught on tape, alleged domestic abuse, being dumped from even the smallest of roles, accusation of misogyny, anti-semitic swears… the list goes on and on.

5. The award for a nation for gaining a reputation for being one of the most corrupt countries goes to India, with scams galore ‘corruption’ is what Indians worried about the most in 2010. From Commonwealth Games corruption to 2G scam and the ‘mediagate’ the scam list continues to grow.

6. The top honors for reputation debacle online of 2010 goes to Online Privacy it just does not exist no more! From Facebook privacy issues to WikiLeaks you can kiss online privacy goodbye with 2010.

7. For the award for worst reputation in politics in 2010 goes to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and the girls and the grass affair and other flamboyant ways. Still hanging on by the end of the tether Berlo had his worst year ever.

8. Award for biggest financial reputation setback goes to Goldman Sachs for misleading clients, the company was charged with securities fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company created a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) referencing the situation of the US economy without telling their clients.

9. ‘Climategate’ gets a special bad rep award for keeping humanity riveted with doomsday predications and scientific results that keep changing. With so many ups an downs the jury is still out on this one. Does any one know what’s happening?

10. Microsoft and Yahoo for losing their reputation grip on the masses, IE is virtually not used no more and Yahoo laying off thousands with plans of axing delicious -both losing out to the Google rise in fame.

So there you go that’s a reputation recap for 2010, a year where the mighty fell and a year where reputation management was seen as a crucial ingredient for maintaining a sound online reputation.

The lawsuit filed against Ernst & Young for their auditing of Lehman Brothers and their acceptance of the now notorious “Repo 105″ manoeuvre that Lehman used to hide their leverage in their quarterly filing and thereby mislead investors as to the true state of their finances has revealed that some of  E&Y’s auditors were concerned and brought up the issue of “reputational risk”.

Reputational risk is growing more fashionable as a concept among strategy thinkers but rarely has much traction among the board or within the C-Suite where a fight between quick profit and long term reputation is usually a round one knockout to profit. Reputational risk is a function that considers the risk of reputation damage as one of the criteria in decision making. The question goes: “what will people think about us or our products if we make this decision, it might be profitable but long term will we lose out as our reputation suffers for being dishonest, etc.”

Strategists tend to worry about the long term rather than the immediate and of the long terms pattern to discern, reputation is one of the most important. Repo 105 was the method used by Lehman Bros to avert the short term reputational risk of seeming too leveraged (ie having too much debt) which might have led to confidence problems in the market. Whilst Ernst and Young  felt that the practice did not breach GAAP rules, it was interesting that no US law firm agreed with them and in the end of the day, Lehman had to find a UK based law firm to sanction the practice.

Financial services companies do worry a lot about reputation but they tend to do so over the short term and within their financial constituency. Despite the crash of 2008, it is still clear that reputational risk still plays a small part in their decision matrix. Witness the witlessness of the foreclosure process which they saw as mechanical and did not consider the potential for reputation fallout. Goldman Sachs likewise have moved their reputation from being highly client-centric to being highly Goldman orientated. As one author put it succinctly, their clients are no more than counter-parties in the deal.

The problem with reputation managers is that they rarely can put their money where their mouth is. The deal is here and the reputation fallout is a long way away; certainly beyond the next bonus round. Investors put a lot more store by reputation as it is a good measure of future prospects and is a true measure of what the market thinks. The share prices of companies like Google and Apple relfect the high reputation of those companies. By a similar measure the fall of Yahoo’s stock price reflects a reputation worry in the market. A worry that asks where are they going, what do they stand for and why should I invest?

Even as more reports of  allegations of sleaze and sex allegations of Italian prime Minister are being  complied by the press,  Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed a resounding victory in provincial elections. The alleged reports of sex, girls and marijuana in his private jets seem to have been ignored by the people of Italy,  a country in which politicians are held to far less exacting standards of moral conduct than in Britain or the United States.

However, Silvio Berlusconi has done serious damage to the  country’s reputation all over the world. The sleaze allegations leveled against the Italian prime minister has hit an all time low when a call  girl claimed that his private jet was used to supply marijuana to sex parties at his villa in Sardinia.

Nadia Macri’, a  28 year old sex worker has claimed that the  billionaire premier paid her €10,000 for sex when she visited him at Villa Certosa in Sardinia last year. An aspiring model and Television showgirl, Macri alos claimed that  marijuana joints were provided for about 25 young women who had been invited to Villa Certosa, the residence of Mr Berlusconi that has played host to world leaders like Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin.  Many escorts, belly dancers and sex girls have come up with shocking details of expensive gifts showered on them by the 72 year old Italian Premier, who had chosen his wife from a group of topless young girls years back!

Silvio Berlusconi  has  shoved the national reputation to unimaginable levels and now that his wife   has demanded a divorce citing his philandering as the reason, not many options are left for Berlusconi.

The 2010 Commonwealth Games was supposed to highlight how far India has come in the past 10 years, instead it seems to demonstrate that everything people thought about India is true.

Anyone who visited India today after a ten year gap would be amazed by the changes so long as you did not scratch too far below the surface. This is a country with a burgeoning and confident middle class that is attracting back its diaspora of citizens. When business is driving change, there are remarkable changes taking place. India’s seething populace is a deep well of often remarkable talent: visit Silicon Valley in the USA to see the truth of it. Look at some of the traditional structures and far less is changing: most notably political structures and an underlying ooze of corruption that ensure that too many infrastructure projects in which the state has a guiding hand are awash with back handers and failed delivery.

India’s Commonwealth Games are growing more tainted by the day with falling bridge fatalities and an Athlete’s Village that provoked storms of protest from the visiting teams. The UK team is staying in a hotel and the New Zealand team has employed contract cleaners before moving out themselves. Some teams are considering not attending and others are horrified. This is supposed to show the New India of the 21st century. Instead it is showing the India of bygone years.

Indian nationals are not, sadly, surprised. They had hoped for better but have  now retreated back into a shocked and somewhat sullen silence. How horrifying to see the vast abyss between India and China and its Beijing Olympics. It is apparent that India’s great leap forward has not been accompanied by an infrastructure leap. For many Indians, the hope is that the augeon stable of national politics may get a much needed cleanup in the near future, but few are holding their breaths in anticipation.

In 2009 India’s National reputation scored  as 22/34 countries among G8 nationals. Interestingly, Indians expected to score in 8th position. Perhaps India wowed by the last ten years has lost sight of what it really is capable of. Their self image score was 82/100, but foreigners scored them at 50/100. The commonwealth games suggests that foreigners may well be right.

National reputations rise and fall each year but it takes time to develop infrastructure and political structures. India may have much further to go before it political institutions are a match for the innovative world beaters of their private sector!

The much hyped 5 -star holiday of America’s first lady in a lavish Mediterranean Retreat when the country was reeling under the worst economic meltdown has had a bad influence in the reputation of the first family. Though  the  first lady is paying for her own room, food and transportation, the government will be bearing the security costs  and support staffers, plus most costs associated with her Air Force plane. Many feel that this foreign luxury  holiday came at a bad time as back home Americans are battling with loss jobs and an insecure future.

The webspace has been abuzz with comments on this ill timed get away at the expenses of the tax payer’s money. Politics Daily readers comments like “A little restraint would be appropriate in these tough economic times. It would mean a lot to the American people who pay for all these vacations and outings and would go a long way towards better relations with the people of the U.S. ” are keeping alive the issue as the first lady gets ready for another spell of holiday to Florida and Massachusetts island in the coming days.

The worst thing is that it  has come close to the heels of the frock controversy  that  sparked ‘nude’ race row that spoiled the First Lady’s second state dinner. Michelle Obama’s reputation has been heavily influenced with these controversies that a Google search would come up with results like Spain vacation and state dinner dress in the top slots.

However, Michelle Obama is far too popular and should ride this controversy well but as they say  all things do add up; and a cross check on the reputation chart will do good at this juncture.

Reputation Management services has become a key aspect for almost all companies. This dynamic service is coming to be regarded as a major boon for all businesses, brands, individuals and products who were victims of this so called reputation crisis. Your company’s reputation might be immaculate at present, but one can’t predict when the situation turns around.

Reputation management services might be something new, but in such a short span of time it has proven its mettle and has got recognition globally. From politician, sports personalities, celebrities, companies to doctors have all embraced it as yet another aspect or PR. It can’t be denied that many companies and brands are benefited with the effective tools of reputation management. No matter its a small business or a Fortune 500 company, reputation management service is meant for all.

It is debated that, the results of these reputation management services comes gradually and not in a haste. Well, to bring your reputation up is a systematic process needs patience, as this is a sensitive area. To promote a brand or key phrase and to optimize it correctly asks for time, and to further push down the negative results and at the same time bringing up positive contents needs a concrete strategy and proper allocation. Meanwhile the use of a pro-active SEO campaign is a smart way to bring up your brand image and reputation in search engines.

Many companies argue that, its really pain staking to sit and watch all negatives about the business, even after resorting to these reputation management services, but they have to understand the sensitivity of the issue. Reputation management campaign works as a process and it slowly weaves a positive image for your brand, making sure the credibility of your brand or company is never lost.

How it works :

After analysing the position of the company online, with the help of the articles, web pages, blogs and  pictures, the reputation management plan is designed.  After judging your present status online and by knowing how people perceive you, the repair works of your online reputation starts off.

As we all know ‘Google’ does an index of new pages fast, so by publishing blogs, web pages and articles about your company we can bring the positive side of your business. As your page gets cached by Google, you can work more stringently to rank those pages on the top searches. It can take a minimum of six months to get the results, but at the end of the day you are satisfied with what Google is coming up with about your company or brand . You have more control of your reputation and that makes all the difference!

As Apple Inc strives to pacify the irate customers over the antennagate fiasco, its shares have tumbled to an all time low and online consumer polls show a swinging brand loyalty among its users. Apple would be wary of the media headlines that talk about the antenna flaws even today as it might result in a dip in its future sale figures. In a Reuters online poll, 56 percent people opined that the controversy made them less likely to buy an iPhone. Ever since the complaints started trickling in, Apple has so far lost about $16 billion in market value.

Meanwhile, an extensive  90-minute news conference held by Apple’s chief executive has helped to fix the public relations damage to some extent, though much remains to be done to resolve the issue . The  press conference of Apple CEO Steve Jobs that came as a surprise to many customers and investors did not touch upon the future course of action that Apple may take to sort out this mess, though it cleared the doubts of the users and  redirected their attention to the positive aspects of this coveted brand.

The company said the media had blown the issue out of proportion, but offered free cases to consumers to help mitigate any signal strength problems.

Industry watchers are betting that  despite all the odds like the pending lawsuits, poor reviews  from Consumer Report and ever increasing user complaints, Apple might not be willing to initiate  an  embarrassing recall, which might be more damaging to its well earned reputation for quality products.

The wrap around antenna  flaws of the hyped iPhone 4 had hit the headlines soon after the model was launched. So, Apple needs to come out with a proactive strategy in identifying and finding a permanent solution to this issue as any delay could prove detrimental to the establishment of iPhone 4 brand in the market. Apple has initiated  quick fix methods like offering free protective cases for the users to offset the signal problem, till it comes up with a permanent solution. It is indeed a race against the clock for Apple as it has to move past the issue quickly to ensure its brand protection before it snowballs into a major scandal.

Related posts:

Apple’s iPhone 4 Antenna Fiasco